I took the whole day off from work yesterday mainly because I needed to attend the "office day" which was about three hours long. I was the first one there, given MANY forms including a thirty question true/false quiz about the lap band. The class had six people and the PAs went over the same information we were given at the seminar. After that, the doctor came in and rehashed the same stuff again. Honestly, I think I could give the classed myself at this point.

I can feel myself getting pretty anxious about all the things that could possibly go wrong. Blood clots, erosion, slippage, vomiting, YIKES!

After class we headed down to the waiting room where we were seen individually to go over our labs and ask any more questions of the surgeon. I told him that I'm getting nervous about all the possible bad outcomes and he really made me feel better. He's never had any patient who had band erosion and he told me how that typically happens and how he avoids it. He uses a different technique to place the port that doesn't involve stitching it to muscle so he hasn't had any port problems in the last two years. He did tell me he had one patient die from a blood clot after bypass surgery. It happened three weeks after surgery and he had refused to move around much since the operation. His wife told the doctor that she was concerned about him getting a clot because he just sat in front of the tv all day, and sure enough a week later it happened.

Dr. Oliak told me that I was a great candidate and he would be very surprised if I had any complications. I'm basically very healthy, just fat. He did tell me that I was pushing it to think I could go back to work the next day. I was able to get the second surgery of the day (9am), so that works out with DH getting me home and picking up the kids at school but I'll have to drive myself to the hospital at 7am. The next day we'll have to go back to pick up my car, so I've decided that I'm not going to try to go to work until Friday the 25th. The 26th is our annual company picnic, and that should be interesting. So...eight more days, but who's counting?!